Linden Lab thinking about printing money and selling it...

Pick a week, and have all the content creators who charge for their products remove them from sale in world. Then lets see how much Linden Labs needs them to make SL viable.

The result would be neglectable as only a minority would be interested in pulling their products.

And then watch as LL do a rollback and put all the products back again, using the licenses they were granted at the moment they were uploaded.

The irony is, if LL sells currency, content creators won't be as able to sell their own $L as easily, won't be able to cover their tier, and will tier down. <--- loss of profit.

I don't think y'all are thinking this through clearly.

Now, I haven't read this entire thread, but I'm basing my theories here on the fact that stipends are disappearing sometime in the future, and this is preperation for it. I have no proof or hard evidence, this is all speculation, and my take on the sutiation.

Fact: LL has removed developer incentives (colloquially known as "dwelloper" incentives) and is in process of removing L$ dwell bonuses.

Fact: Removing stipends would cull the last sink of "free" money into SL, excluding starting funds.

Fact: The number of people in SL is growing. Without printing money anymore, the pool of L$ in circulation will remain static (acutally shrinking, as explained below), causing deflation as the number of people in SL grows.

Fact: None of the currency "sinks" (ratings, uploads, etc.) are going away, with no stipends and no more introduction of L$ to the economy, the pool of currency will shrink, causing further deflation

Fact: Too much deflation can be as bad as too much inflation, especially to an economy such as Second Life -- massive deflation would make Second Life unattractive to those here to have fun and hang out. There's a happy medium somewhere that needs to be reached.

Fact: In order to maintain a stable economy, L$ will need to be injected into the economy somehow. The easiest way to do this without "free" money is by introducing it into the currency exchange.

Now, I'm not saying LL should be able to print and sell money wholesale, I think we need stronger wording in the ToS with restrictions on LL's ability to sell L$.

Something along the lines of putting LL's L$ sales at a lower priority than residents (ie, if no residents have L$ up for sale at the going rate, LL's sales come up) and certian amounts to inject into the economy at certian times.

This is all kind of sketchy right now -- I'd type up more complete theories, but I'm late for an appointment

anyway, questions? comments? death threats? IM me in-world on on-forum if you have anything geared specifically at me

CCC

lets point out the facts here... LL selling L into lindex to stabalize it is proposturous first off no matter what they think. As a whole it cant work to stabalize jack. People will undercut LL's effort the same way they undercut each other now unless LL decides to completely control Lindex and be the ones exclusively selling L (doing away with their model that draws quite a few residents) then it isnt feasable. The better way would be control and punishing those that decide to go into the exchange at a lower value and rewarding those that hold back some. Also a better thing would be to actually control stipend paymets. Doing away with them wont help anyone other then LL or those that ultimately already have alot of money...

The question to LL is do you ruin the basic infastructure of SL and lose alot of money or do you continue to make money and actually control stuff a bit better. Most of the stuff i've heard from residents and linden's alike will not work that includes their economist.. I say if idiotic residents cause inflation thats their problem. Either way the majority of the community gets hurt because a few residents are greedy people. I ask LL to actually realize whats going on in the community rather then guessing it getting rid of things wont help it will just makes things turn to the other extreme. L will never stabalize near a certain amount regardless if you are printing it as i stated b4 if its still resident run it will jsut continue on the trend eventually. In the long run there is no fix other then a few practical controls i mentioned work out the stipend to give users what the average L on a week is in L split into 4 weeks 1.25 usd worth of L whatever that value currently averages over a weeks time on tuesday. as well as punishment and rewards on the lindex system. Control is needed not taking away things i hope you realize this and dont hurt a vast majority of SL users....

Fact:

the question is to this does philip actually know whats going on because other posts made by robin linden lead me to believe he isnt quite informed

Gom
slashed stippened
slashed DI
slashed stippened again
slashing dwell
printing own money
selling own money

gee didn't anshecorp want to print and sell their own money. Sure would be nice if LL starting getting their own orginal ideas instead of just stealing the ideas of its player base.

This will not end well...mainly because their commercial tactic started as a pile of shit to begin with. Ho fucking ha ra.

That's hot.

note he said IMMEDIATE plans, I based my assumption on elimination stipends later down the line, they're just currently laying groundwork, leading up to cutting things off.

they've been putting this down since just after I joined, with the stipend bonus cut.


anyhoo, that's my take on the situation, sorry for not being more clear earlier.

CCC

With this new change I think the only thing between now and IMMEDIATE plans to cut the stipend is figuring out how they want to do it. Now that they've decided to sell lindens that $164kUS worth they gave away in April has got to look tempting.(That's tier on 841 sims without any expenses to reduce the amount they get to pocket(for perspective there are only 847 private sims)).

Why are people speculating about the meaning of phrases like they're codewords for something when the very phrases are explained in the original announcement?

ok maybe I'm stoopid
is this extortion?

Basically LL is saying they want a peice of the pie.
They want to get money for the sales I create!

This is garbage.
They do that and I boycott. I'll pull every product and go to basic until they get it right. But I'm lucky, cause my main clients pay with checks in the mail.

MAYBE ME AND MY FRIENDS WILL MAKE TONS AND TONS OF FREEBIES AND STOP THE SLeX IN ITS TRACKS

SL, its just a game to some people

LL is on the war path to increase profitability... Their investors
have pretty much told them "Show Me The Money" otherwise
this time next year, SL might be in the toilet..

LL has been in the business in printing $L for money ever since they started giving out stipends.

The difference is that stipends are issue no matter if it is needed or not because it is an "entitlement", and indeed it is a contractual agreement that LL must fulfill. Problem to this approach is that it is inflexible, No mattetr how much the supply or demand changes the amount printed will always be proportional to the number of “accounts”.

LL has little control over stability of $L because over 80% of the supply increases each month is bound by these contracts.

Consider changing the model:
1. Remove stipends - $0 cost to standard account
2. Charge only the land tier fee to people who wish to own land
3. Release $L into the market only when the market demands it – This link LL’s revenue directly to the performance of the SL economy: the more people buy goods, services in SL, the more lindens would be needed to facilitate the transaction, higher the demand for $L, more money for LL

LL has been using the word “platform” to sell SL for a while now. It is time for them to step up and believe in their own words, and step away from the relying on the subscription fee model.

Ok so here's a question.

What if instead of "printing money" (which they are doing anyway/could do more of with the stipend system), LL only sold the L$ they umm "earned" in revenues from sinks like classified ads and upload fees? Wouldn't that be something that actually approached a normal economic model?

I forget the exact refrence, but I read in a recient post by a Linden that this is [currently] EXACTLY what they are planning to do....I think....

Toodle-oo!

::edit::

...except I do not recall any mention in that post about removing the entitlements...

That would be a zero sum game not an economy.

In short term is may seem like a good idea because it would strengthen $L.

In the long run, at a critical point, growth will stall and stop because the limited amount of $L will not be able to support all the transactions.

Also, as we can see, the sink amount is 10% of what the stipend is. $l would still need to be printed.

I read the accouncement about LL taking over selling lindens and I think it sounds like a good idea if their stated goal is what they say - to stabalize the rate. I believe LL recently hired someone to manage the currency so this stop makes sense.

At this early point in LL's life they would not be so stupid as to make a few dollars by flooding the market with lindens. This is a critical point for them as they get media attention and start to ramp up and devaluing the linden as this point would throw their unique attribute, a real economy, into doubt and cost them much more than they might make on selling a few lindens.

Eliminating dwell at this point is a good idea since it's been gamed to death with camping chairs. I'd love to see businesses in SL succeed honestly and not by stealing dwell and making find "popular places" useless.

An Idea - if SL wants to really stabalize the linden then allow everyone to pay teir and monthly fees in fixed amounts of lindens. This would also provide the large large linden sink they need.